[APPLAUSE]
I'm going to read one more, close it off with this one.
OK?
I'm going to read this one here and close it off.
I'm feeling a little nervous for this thing.
Who knows who's back there, you know?
I still got that prison paranoia.
Somebody is going to stab me through the-- come on.
Anybody back there?
Come on out!
No, just kidding.
Whoa, OK.
Marcelo, go back there!
No, just kidding.
OK.
OK, this is the last one I'm going to read.
I was in New York writing a play.
And I was coming home one night.
And these kids jumped off a bunch
of tires they were on in an alley.
And one thing got me was this kid came down and wanted
sell me some crack.
I said, you got any good weed?
No, I'm kidding.
I'm just joking, all right?
He came down and he said, do you want
to buy some crack or some coke?
And for one second I just stood there
and I asked him, what are you selling?
And I meant that philosophically, not--
And he looked at me and he got it.
They're so sharp.
And he said, I'm selling God.
[LAUGHTER]
And I was like, whoa dude.
[LAUGHTER]
I need God, but not that kind of God.
And then I came back to New Mexico.
And this one guy, who was a really hardcore convict,
was one of the people I really admired the most,
as a father for his children.
He was such an extraordinary man.
When he was born, his father had tattooed his neck
with a hangman's rope.
And in order to keep a connection with his father,
who died, who was murdered as a junkie--
they killed him-- he took the rope, where
his father ended it, and tattooed the rope
around his body to his ankles.
And he became one of the most violent men I've ever known,
really violent.
He was recruited by Oklahoma, and Nebraska, and Texas
to play football.
And they threw him out within a month of practice,
because he had done crazy things to people.
And then I took him to read it at school one time.
And the people in the room, the teachers at the University,
left the room.
And they asked-- they called me out.
And I went out.
They said, you can't have this man in the same room
with these people.
And I began to I began to hear all kind of horrible stories
about this guy.
Well, he was a boxer for the United States.
And he went to the Olympics.
And while he was there, his wife killed his child
because of the things he had done to her.
So they brought him back on a stretcher.
He had completely lost everything.
He was becoming aware after a period of time.
And he emailed me several times saying can we meet.
And I tell him I don't want to meet you.
I don't want anything to do with you.
I didn't know who he was.
I just didn't want to meet somebody.
Because I really was doing other work.
But he was really insistent, so I finally met him.
And over the past six years, he's
become one of the most beautiful men I've ever known.
And he just came out--
he's coming out with his second book now.
And he's the most beautiful father to two girls
and what an amazing man.
But anyway, the celebration we're
going to have for Christmas is we're
going to cut the hangman's rope that he himself
put on with his father.
Because now he's a writer, and he has a novel.
Plus, he has a book of poetry that was well received
and stuff.
And he said to me--
I asked him-- what changed you?
He said the birth of my daughter.
So this is the poem about that and the drugs.
At eight years old my uncle lures them
with grain and a pail.
Shoots one white and black brothers,
guzzle their brother's blood in the trough.
As I look at the pigs, I'm shocked any animal would
drink their brother's blood.
At 10, I walked the chop block streets
with the race roosters tail strut, raise it for a fight.
Life, a broken fire hydrant flooding streets
with our young blood.
I know that across town in the opulent estates
of the rich, fountains gazelle, and bridal train gardens
drain abundantly over spear-tipped walls.
And I know Grecian statues offered laureled wisdom
to the butlered adults with paperweight hearts.
Who sipped their champagne in the garden,
answering the burning and gunning of America by saying,
build more prisons.
And I know nobody cares what I'll find to eat
or where I'm going to sleep.
Under streetlights throwing dirt clods at a hornet's nest,
I'm afraid of being stung.
I vow to avenge my poverty, to gash
them mercifully with a bicycle chain, spineless attorneys
taking advantage of my misery.
I vow to rub executives in limousines sampling heroin
off their hookers thighs.
I vow to mug pretty brokers with golden smiles
whose gutter glares condemn me.
And all the chumps who never cracked a soup line biscuit
or had a court gavel crush your life, I vow, you should know.
I plan violent schemes against you.
You should know that I pray saints melt this pain I got,
red hot.
I'll hammer sharp to take you down to the darkness
where I live and impale your head on la Virgen de
Guadalupe's moon sickle.
Because, you see, at 12 years old
I am no good, dime bag, and Peruvian flakes,
inhaling a glue rag.
And with all your police and your educated university
people, and your prison sentences,
you can't chase me from the street!
Or stop me from selling drugs, man!
Don't you know that?
Because in my square white paper lives God.
Don't you understand?
I deal God, who gives reprieve from earthly hell
and makes me feel good.
Don't you understand that this God gives me hope?
And transforms despair to a cocaine habit
till I'm killed or OD'd just for a moment,
like other homeboys trashed on a stack of County jail corpses,
who all understood that life was nothing but a sewer grate.
Our dignity poured down with discarded city litter,
where crack creates light when all one's got is darkness.
Don't you know crack is God?
When hopeless days bury me under rock piles of despair,
blocking me from feeling anything anymore,
breaking my heart into these huge icebergs of nothing.
I am no good and I preach nothing door to door.